Melodies of Speech

Abstract

The focus in this chapter is on fast speech events. Specifically, it centers upon the melodies of speech created by vocal modulations of micro-driving rhythms associated with a speaker’s fundamental frequency. Briefly, it is about vocal intonation patterns in speech. Theoretically, it concentrates on a listener’s ability to engage pitch tracking (i.e., frequency following) to follow a speaker’s changing vocal pitch. To describe pitch tracking, pitch contrasts arising from vocal modulations are formalized using the important entrainment construct of a detuning curve. This methodology is described in detail. A derivative of this curve is the isolation of pitch accents as extreme pitch contrasts. The remainder of this chapter focuses on the role of pitch accents in outlining slower macro-rhythms of intonation that invite either traditional mode-locking (hence global attractors) or transient mode-locking (hence attractor profiles).